Director, Game Design - Unpublished R&D Product - Riot Games

As the Director of Game Design, you’ll lead a group of passionate team of designers through pre-production to production and release. You will ensure that designers have well supported growth, and that craft execution meets or exceeds our extremely high standards. You’ll also help mentor designers in management roles. You’ll partner with the Game Director and the game leadership team to translate product vision into game. This role reports to the Executive Producer.

Responsibilities:

• Leading the Design Discipline on the game team, including direct management of a significant proportion of design leadership.
• Ensuring design craft standards are upheld.
• Work closely with the Game Director to translate the product vision into an actionable plan with industry design best-practices and player focus.
• Mentor design leads, grow their careers, and seek opportunities that help them develop their goals. 
• Seek high quality designers and staff them against the needs of the game.
• Contribute to Design Department processes and rituals, leveling up our approach to things like recruiting, performance assessment and knowledge sharing
• Collaborate with other discipline leads as part of a cross-functional leadership team.
• Represent and advocate for the design discipline both internally to other teams and externally to players.
• Build positive relationships across other teams at Riot in shared gameplay spaces

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in game design roles in game development.
• 5+ years of experience as a leader in a game design organization (i.e. Lead Designer, Design Director, Game Director, Head of Design, Creative Director, etc.)
• Experience working as a developer on a first-person shooter game.
• Experience in managing a significant team of designers
• Demonstrated and substantial experience recruiting new designers
• Experience working in a “games as a service” environment.
• This role involves designing and developing game mechanics and game systems. A candidate must have strong knowledge across FPS genres in order to function appropriately.

Desired Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience within the games industry
• Experience managing managers

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!

Our Perks:

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming.